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| - Modern cutlery and open-concept design doesn't save this less than mediocre dim sum restaurant.
Rosewood Chinese Cuisine is the newest dim sum restaurant in the Spadina-Chinatown area and unfortunately they don't improve on what already works. I took my mother and sister for a late morning meal, and the restaurant was half full. So far so good! The seating arrangement on the first floor is how a lot of modern Asian-fusion restaurants have their layout: one long bench along the wall with about 5 or 6 2-person tables running along the bench. The upper floor has bistro style booths interspersed with 4-person seating and larger banquet style tables. We sat upstairs.
The server brought us a pot of tea that was lukewarm and already steeped. The service was not great, with our server giving us and several tables the wrong dishes. We ordered the staples of dim sum: har gow, siu mai, minced beef balls with bean curd stick, pineapple pork buns, rice flour rolls, egg tarts, vegetarian bean curd rolls, and deep fried taro dumplings.
Among the seven dishes, only the har gow and siu mai were hot. The rice flour rolls were on the verge of going bad and tasted almost sour, and the minced beef balls were on a bed of onions instead of the traditional bean curd. I have to give credit to the ingenious pineapple pork buns. Combining the two is a stroke of brilliance. The egg tarts were okay, the crust was flaky and light but the filling was cold and way too sweet. The taro dumplings were not worth mentioning. All in all, the food didn't blow me away and the major deal-breaker was the freshness of the food.
The most important thing about dim sum is the freshness and timing of each dish. You want to sit down, relax, and enjoy each dish at a leisurely pace. The server brought out all of our food at once, so by the time we worked on the last dish it was already cold. She also brought the eggtarts first, which is usually eaten last. I feel like rosewood's concept and execution for dim sum is too scattered. While it looks nice, clean, and modern, it doesn't deliver where it's most important: taste and service.
2016 Update:
So after avoiding this place for the last 4 years, I thought I'd give it another visit. Hey, maybe it's gotten better after all this time, right? Wrong! If anything, the dishes are even more mediocre than before! I went with my wife and 2 friends, and we ordered a good amount of food. The biggest let down was their shrimp in rice roll (Ha Cheung). The correct way to prepare this dish is to mince the shrimp into a fine paste, and season with garlic, salt, white pepper, then steam it in rice flour wrapper. The way that Rosewood does it is .. they just throw three pieces of shrimp in the rice roll wrapper and call it a day.
I lied, that wasn't the biggest let down. The price was the biggest let down.
When we visited this restaurant 4 years ago, while mediocre, Rosewood could still boast very competitive prices and offered an early bird special for diners. I was shocked to see that Rosewood prices their dishes around as much (if not more than) Rol San, which is head and shoulders above Rosewood in terms of quality and freshness.
So 4 years later, the food has stayed the same (if not gotten worse) and their prices have went up. If you must have dim sum around Spadina and Dundas, I would recommend Sky Dragon if you're looking for the traditional cart service at an amazing price, or Rol San for quality and being a bit more non-Chinese friendly (items are listed in English and Chinese).
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